Victoria: A sewage treatment plant at last

Politicians said in Victoria, B.C. on Monday that they expect construction will begin this year on plants that will — finally — treat the raw sewage that British Columbia’s touristy provincial capital has long dumped into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The Canadian federal government, the province of B.C., and local municipalities will share equally in the $782 million (Canadian) cost of secondary treatment, politicians announced in a ceremony full of self-praise held at Victoria’s Inn at Laurel Point.

But political leaders from Victoria and neighboring municipalities delayed and defended dumping for more than two decades.

Only after an independent scientific panel, including American experts, threw cold water on official claims did the provincial government tell Victoria in 2006: Get off the pot.

International outcry, and no small amount of humor and ridicule, forced the issue.

“I’ve heard from people in the Middle East say they don’t hear much about Canada very often, but one of the things they routinely hear about is that our capital cities dump 40 billion litres of raw sewage into the ocean,” Barry Penner, the former environment minister who ordered the cleanup, told CBC News.

The issue was initially brought to international attention by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1991. It was soon above-the-fold front page news in the New York Times.

American yachting enthusiasts infuriated stuffy nabobs at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club by organizing an alternative to the annual Swiftshure Yacht Race in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

A Victoria graduate student dressed up as a falsetto-voiced, six-foot-tall turd — “Mr. Floatie” — and tried to enter the Victoria-Hillsdale riding (district) candidates’ night during British Columbia’s 2005 election. Mr. Floatie later sought to run for mayor of Victoria.

Canada’s then-federal environment minister, David Anderson, tried to stem the flow of controversy. But he inadvertently added to it by depicting the Strait of Juan de Fuca as a giant toilet whose currents flushed away the sewage.

Anderson was irritated when, on the KCTS-TV’s “Seattle Week in Review,” journalists joked about how the cabinet’s Privy Council should take up sewage dumping, and that treatment should be announced in the government’s next Speech from the Throne.

Cities on the U.S. side of the Strait, which is an international waterway, were ordered by the Environmental Protection Agency to install secondary sewage treatment back in the 1970′s.

Naturally, years of delay and denial were forgotten on Monday.

“This is a quarter of a billion dollars to end dumping of sewage into waters around Victoria,” said James Moore, a member of Canada’s House of Commons from the governing Conservative Party.

Ida Chong, a provincial legislator, was quoted in the Victoria Times-Colonist as saying: “I look forward to seeing shovels in the ground . . . This project is intended to bring the region’s infrastructure in line with environmental standards, help preserve our precious waterways and create vital jobs for B.C. families.”